My friend recently moved up to New York’s Upper West Side (UWS), and one night I passed by this cafe and was pleased to find it was vegan. So I made a note to return to this place to check it out since it looked so cute inside. Peacefood Cafe is on New York City’s 82nd and Amsterdam. Peacefood Cafe has outdoor seating and is pretty spacious. True to its name, it feels pretty peaceful inside, quiet as cafes in Manhattan can get, with dark wooden chairs, sea foam green walls, lots of plants and colorful paintings.
I returned on a not so crowded Thursday afternoon with my favorite vegan friend. It was the usual upper west side crowd, stroller moms, lunchers reading the newspaper and having coffee, and the laptop-ers. The cafe offers free WiFi till 5pm and it has decent table space and enough outlets.
I ordered coffee, but since they were in the works of brewing more, they upgraded me to an Americano free of charge. Good coffee, and no extra charge for soy milk.
They have a good selection of salads, sandwiches, pizza, sides, and juice. We ordered the Roasted Japanese Pumpkin sandwich, the Fluffy Quinoa salad, and Pan-seared Shanghai-style Dumplings.
The Roasted Japanese Pumpkin was very hearty and filling. The bread was pretty good considering it was whole spelt rye bread. The sandwich was very flavorful, almost too flavorful. It was hard to distinguish the taste of the pumpkin because the caramelized onions were overwhelming a bit. I did enjoy the slight nutty taste from the ground walnuts.
Lately, I’ve been really enjoying quinoa as my new go-to grain protein instead of rice. The Fluffy Quinoa salad was very fresh, but like my friend said, “It’s something I could make at home,” but in her vegan expertise she did say this was her favorite dish out of what we ordered.
The Fluffy Quinoa Salad
The Pan-seared Shanghai-style Dumplings were my favorite. They reminded me of a healthier version of the Korean fried dumplings called “mandoo.” They were stuffed with chives, mushrooms and tofu. It came with a ginger balsamic dipping sauce that had a soy sauce taste to it. Our server was also gracious enough to give us extra dipping sauces, one was a vegan mayo, another a hot sauce that made the dumplings taste even more Korean.
For dessert we ordered the Key Lime Pie which not only was vegan, but also raw. All their desserts are baked in their kitchen, no dairy, egg, or refined sugar is used in their recipes. The crust of the Key Lime Pie was really good, made of Brazil nuts and tasted like it also had dates in it. The filling could have been more tart but the texture was good. The filling also tasted like it was made with cashews. Like most raw desserts, it was probably really nut heavy and really caloric, but definitely worth it.
Peacefood Cafe is so cute I definitely want to come here again, maybe come back to try their paninis and pizza.
I really want to try this place, but it’s so far from where I’m from (queens)